Posted
by
samzenpuson Sunday March 30, 2014 @10:26AM
from the color-of-things dept.

houghi (78078) writes "From European Geosciences Union: 'A team of Greek and German researchers has shown that the colours of sunsets painted by famous artists can be used to estimate pollution levels in the Earth's past atmosphere. In particular, the paintings reveal that ash and gas released during major volcanic eruptions scatter the different colours of sunlight, making sunsets appear more red.' The original paper can be found here. In the last 150 years, the sunsets have become redder, likely reflecting increased man-made pollution."

At least they are not rectangular anymore, as they used to be in the cubist era. Imagine the weather changes caused by a non-isotropic rotating Sun! I imagine the only reason why they didn't complain and got used to it was because WW I and the post-war depression were worse.

Rothko - There's pollution in the atmosphere, but it gives you a warm, fuzzy feeling.

Pollock - The world's fucked.

Lichtenstein - The atmosphere is comical.

Magritte - The sky looks fine . . . but it is in the face of a scary looking guy in a black suit.

Science and art . . . quite a powerful combination! What do creationist believe about the world's atmosphere . . . did God create it polluted? Or did it start with that eviction deal over a terms of use dispute with the Garden of Eden . . . ?

One of my many studies in life has been art. I paint in oils and acrylics, and even took a few college courses. Very few painters are "realists" and even back 3000 years ago we knew about how to use colors for effect, not realism.

Sure, sculpting was one of those things where the ancient Greek artists tried to be as realistic as possible. At the same time, paintings of Hermes and Zeus indicate that not everything required the same level of realism (unless of course someone wishes to argue that the Ancient Greeks "saw" their gods.). Trying to measure the atmosphere based on pictures of Hermes seems pretty silly to me.

Lets also not forget that even with realism, many things can give the sunset or sunrise in a nice red hue (storm on the horizon anyone?). The pollution in the atmosphere is just one of countless things that could cause the sky to have a red hue. I really hope that people are not calling this "science".

Lets also not forget that even with realism, many things can give the sunset or sunrise in a nice red hue (storm on the horizon anyone?). The pollution in the atmosphere is just one of countless things that could cause the sky to have a red hue. I really hope that people are not calling this "science".

Plus, the artist would probably be expected to choose a scene they felt warranted the time and effort to paint it. Boring dull horizon. . . yeah, I'll paint that one! Bright colorful horizon. . . naw, why waste my time! If there was same reason to expect that every type of sky was equally represented in the paintings then this theory could hold some water, but I don't see how you could expect that to be. If they were constantly running weather cams or something, then it would work.

And the pigments, they have changed. Industrial tube colors came about 150 years ago as well. The amount of aerosols have reduced significantly during the last decades over Europe due to environmental regulation, while in some other places they have likely increased quite significantly.

"Pollution" is what happens when living things do stuff. Pollution is not bad, per se... it is a fact of life. Demonizing "pollution" is the way of the intellectually unsophisticated or lazy. It is how we deal with pollution that is ever the issue.

Our goal should still be to limit pollution to what is absolutely necessary and not overdo it. Along the golden rule that your actions should not impose more harm upon others than entirely necessary (because by the very nature of existence it is impossible to have no negative impact on everyone all the time).

I'm not talking about banning something. I don't feel it's my prerogative to tell anyone how to lead their lives. But I'd expect people to understand that resources are limited and that responsible use thereof is in order.

The climate debate is pretty much settled: humans are responsible for (at least) most of the current climate shock.

But this is just silly. Art is subjective, even for the artist. And even if all artists always painted with perfect colours that don't change over time, artists don't paint sunsets on a regular basis, but rather irregularly, such as when they're extra pretty.

This sort of study makes AGW proponents look desperate, and that's not a good way to convince people who prefer to stick their heads in the sand.

> But this is just silly. Art is subjective, even for the artist. And even if all artists always painted with perfect colours that don't change over time, artists don't paint sunsets on a regular basis, but rather irregularly, such as when they're extra pretty.

Do read the article. They measured red-green _ratios_. Since much of color vision is based on the contrast between objects, and since they measured changes in the same artist's work from year to year, this seems a very reasonable way of measuring c

> Or just their fucking imagination, geesh what mental gyrations "scientists" and the holy believers will go through to "support" their religion.

Well, yes. That's why the researchers looked for artists who tried to do "realistic" work, and compared over years of work by the same artist, and checked for the contrast levels, rather than the direct color. It's actually quite good work based on how human eyes and minds perceive color, as _contrasts_ rather than as absolute values.

Everyone seems to be assuming that this paper is about global warming. It's not.

The pollutants that they are talking about generally lead to cooling of the climate, as evidenced by the climate change observed after major volcanic eruptions. Just because it talks about pollution, does not necessarily mean it's equatable to global warming. In most of the western world, these airborne pollutants are now at a much lower level than they were a hundred years ago.

Climate change is a scientific proposition, and has absolutely nothing to do with "literature", unless you're referring to research papers that have been peer-reviewed and repeated by others. In which case the overwhelmingly consensus is that yes, fossil fuel CO2 emissions are very much in danger of tipping the the planet into a runaway climate shift that will end the ice age that is all our species has ever known.

Take a look at this video series - he does a pretty decent job in he first couple videos of stripping away all the hypes and disingenuousness of both sides of the political debate, and gets down to the actual science and scientific debate. Yes, there is some scientific debate, but no, it has nothing to do with any of the tripe you've heard on the "news". He then spends many, many more episodes tearing apart the mountain of lies politicians and talking heads have piled on the issue.

Starting to like Immermans tone. Yes, I was referring to journals. And a proposition is not a proven fact, by definition.

Since the tone of this conversation has shifted to one of debate (which is welcomed), most of the science that has been published is NOT repeatable, due to two factors: 1) to the confidence intervals when taken in 2) combination with the way the study data must be flogged and contorted, in order to produce a reasonably acceptable CI. This fact is never in dispute, even with most frequ

Observational science is by it's nature difficult to repeat, and when discussing changes on a global scale the necessary period of repeatability is by necessity thousands, if not millions of years - which doesn't help us at all. So we're force to extrapolate from small-scale knowledge.

Known - no significant debate among scientists.- atmospheric CO2, methane, and water vapor all slow the rate of thermal loss into space by making the atmosphere less transparent to IR, with water vapor and CO2 capturing relatively independent parts of the infrared band.- historical temperature reconstructions show that the combination of solar variation, atmospheric CO2 levels, and ice-cap extents (and a few other much less significant factors) appear to completely explain all major historical thermal fluctuations.- atmospheric CO2 monitoring shows steadily accelerating increases consistent with known human CO2 emissions- observations of the atmosphere at all levels show warming consistent with even decades-old models of AGW- over extremely long timescales the global climate oscillates between two metastable positions - ice ages, with their oscillations between deep freezes and temperate interglacial periods that we're in today, and warm periods (where oscillations seem to be instead between tropics and deserts).- at some point in every transition from an ice-age to a warm period a runaway process appears to take over, where melting ice caps, permafrost, and oceanic methane hydrates release ever-increasing amounts of greenhouse gasses into the atmosphere in a self-reinforcing cycle, until those reserves have been completely spent and the planet is firmly established in a warm period

Unknown:- exactly where the "tipping point" is that causes runaway warming to take over (but all our best estimates are that with current fossil fuel consumption trends we'll cross it with ease by the end of the century, if we haven't done so already)- exactly how fast things can change, and how fast the biospere can adapt - i.e. just how bad the associated mass extinctions from a particular transition might be.- exactly what sorts of weather changes to expect during the centuries of transition.

If you can throw some additional unknowns out that call into question the reality of the problem we're facing I'd be glad to hear it.

You left out one driver of climate change over geologic time scales. Continental drift which over the eons might be the largest driver of climate change. Relatively recent examples could be the closing of the isthmus of Panama stopping currents between the Pacific and Atlantic and the opening of the straight between Antarctica and S. America.Of course this is long term affects and obviously has nothing to do with historical climate.

Despite all our efforts to reduce emissions, they are still increasing faster than the worst-case "alarmist" scenarios in historical predictions. The models are consistent in the sense that you plug in actual CO2 emissions (one of the inputs) they predict the atmospheric warming we're seeing.

That is why climate change prediction graphs usually branch into multiple lines on "today" - you usually get a best-case "if we stopped emissions today" line, a worst case "if we continue to increase fossil carbon use

In which case the overwhelmingly consensus is that yes, fossil fuel CO2 emissions are very much in danger of tipping the the planet into a runaway climate shift that will end the ice age that is all our species has ever known.

Except there's no consensus about a tipping point pushing into runaway climate change. I don't even know why you think there is a consensus on that. There is one very vocal scientist who is certain it will happen (James Hansen), and there are certainly others who agree with him, but it is far from a consensus. Seriously, where did you hear that?

No, there's definitely a consensus on a tipping point - every major climate shift for which we have data shows evidences of a runaway positive feedback loop where atmospheric CO2 levels climb precipitously when leaving an ice age (which we're currently in an interglacial period within), and there's no longer any serious debate about the warming effects of atmospheric CO2. Typically the process lags behind the temperature by several hundred years, this is the first time on record where it would be CO2 changes acting as the forcing factor rather than just positive feedback, but the warming effects of atmospheric CO2 are well understood and accepted. Normally something else happens that sets the planet to warming - orbital shifts increasing solar energy being one of the major ones. but then the CO2 feedback loop kicks in and carries the warming far beyond what the forcing factor alone could have done.

Where there's not a broad consensus is on just how much warming has to happen before the positive feedback loop becomes unavoidable without massive risky geoengineering projects. Historic CO2 emissions (if we cut them to zero today) however are estimated to be sufficient to raise the global temperature by at least a couple degrees C, we're almost there already, and it'll be decades before current atmospheric CO2 levels can fall back to 1900 levels and stop warming the planet further. Meanwhile more realistic estimates based on current fossil-fuel consumption trends are estimating closer to a 4-10 degree change by the end of the century, and most climatologists believe that will be more than sufficient to cross the tipping point. We are after all starting from the position of a nice warm interglacial period.

No, there's definitely a consensus on a tipping point - every major climate shift for which we have data shows evidences of a runaway positive feedback loop where atmospheric CO2 levels climb precipitously when leaving an ice age (which we're currently in an interglacial period within), and there's no longer any serious debate about the warming effects of atmospheric CO2. Typically the process lags behind the temperature by several hundred years, this is the first time on record where it would be CO2 changes acting as the forcing factor rather than just positive feedback, but the warming effects of atmospheric CO2 are well understood and accepted. Normally something else happens that sets the planet to warming - orbital shifts increasing solar energy being one of the major ones. but then the CO2 feedback loop kicks in and carries the warming far beyond what the forcing factor alone could have done.

Ok, I think you are confused here. I asked why you thought there was consensus on a certain point, and you responded by describing the hypothesis in greater detail. Which is cool, but it doesn't answer the question in any way........

Go ahead, find me some credible links there calling into question the existence of such a thing.

The global climate is a metastable system on geologic timescales - there's no serious question about that. And *every* metastable system has tipping points - that's the defining quality of metastability.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M... [wikipedia.org]

So.......there have been attempts to identify consensus on climate change. A typical method is presented here [uic.edu], which finds that most scientists agree that the earth is getting warmer, and that humans have contributed, for example. That is one method of measuring consensus.

Do you notice they didn't ask whether the scientists are worried about a 'tipping point?' Looking at a Google search is not the same as showing that there is consensus. Is that the reason you think there is a consensus, counting Google s

No, it is because a tipping point is implied by every climate model in existence that is capable of describing the transitions between ice ages and warm periods - i.e. pretty much all of them. To deny the existence of a tipping point is to deny the nature of metastable systems and eons of geologic history that show our planet to be one such. Nobody is doing research to measure the degree of consensus about a tipping point for the same reason nobody is researching the degree of consensus about the existence

We get it, you are climate change believers.... can we move on.... please.

That's an awkward turn of phrase - 'climate change believer' , like calling someone who drives a car an 'oxidation believer' or someone who is careful on a ladder a 'gravity believer'.

In any case, no, we won't stop discussing an important topic just because it makes you uncomfortable. And it will continue to have import for hundreds of years, although I suspect if we bit the bullet and did something now the discussion later would be less fraught - like pulling a painful tooth.

I am happy to have my views and data tested and confirmed by others, are you? You post is laughable. Go get into your Prius, drive to Whole Foods and buy some free-range-non-GMO-fair-trade-organic food that only elitists can afford...

Absolutely. Now show me some serious research that suggests we aren't responsible for global warming and perhaps I'll take you seriously. Because the overwhelming consensus among the actual researchers qualified to have an opinion is that we are in serious trouble. The opinions of engineers, doctors, biologists, english literature professors, etc. are irrelevant. Much less the opinions of industry-sponsored talking heads barely qualified to wipe their own asses.

"The overwhelming consensus" is blather, my uneducated friend. The "overwhelming consensus" is simply mass faith based on myth. Getting a group of people to believe in a myth is easy. The fact that billions of people believe in God or Allah, doesn't make "god" or "allah" anymore tangible and provable... it just makes billions of people terribly misinformed, but "faithful" people. Not unlike you.

The fact that you must resort to ad-hominem attacks directed at people that disagree with you, only further rein

You are quite correct, except for one key detail - I said "the overwhelming consensus among the actual researchers qualified to have an opinion"

That is to say pretty much *everybody* who has spent the tens of thousands of hours of time and energy necessary to actually understand the issues in question agrees that we have a problem. Just about the only people arguing against it are those who have major business interests in protecting the status quo, or are being paid to come up with pseudo-scientific bulls

the climate has never been "stable" on this globe. We are not in an "ice age", you'll notice the lack of kilometer or two of ice over N. America. We are in an "interglacial" that is 12,000 years old, and that has nothing to do with humans. All that time the sea level has been rising, and if you look it up charts you'll see even the rate of rise for much of that time has been much faster than today's rate

Interglacial periods are part of an ice age - note the thick year-round ice caps on the poles? A sure sign we're still in an ice age, and one that estimates are will be gone within a few centuries at most if we don't drastically reduce fossil carbon emissions very quickly.

No, the climate has never been stable, but it seems to have two meta-stable states around which it oscillates - ice ages, with their associated deep-freezes and temperate interglacial periods, and "hot Earths" where deserts and tropics ba

John Christy, Professor of Atmospheric Science at the University of Alabama in Huntsville, who has written: “I’m sure the majority (but not all) of my IPCC colleagues cringe when I say this, but I see neither the developing catastrophe nor the smoking gun proving that human activity is to blame for most of the warming we see.”

When I read the title I thought to my self "That's a clever way to word something, so people will be outraged, read the article and then find that it's really about them sampling paint and finding pollutants there." But no, it was as ridiculous as the title suggested. Can we revoke their science card?

You'd revoke their science card for what the authors freely admit is a "tentative proposal"? And based on, what, your hunch that what they describe is too good to be true?

They sampled red-green ratios from various painters, compared it to historical pollution data and found a correlation. They got an artist to paint before and after a dust event (of which he was unaware) and found a similar correlation. Doesn't sound that far-fetched to me. Will it "help study the Earth’s past atmosphere" as the headl

They sampled red-green ratios from various painters, compared it to historical pollution data and found a correlation.

Good God. Seriously? Really wonkey_monkey? You're willing to give these idiota the benefit of the doubt because... they found a correlation? I know what happens next: The correlation becomes a model, the model predicts utter doom for mankind, possibly, but first more money is needed to fund further research!

They should be fired for brining science into disrepute. I bet their "corre

No, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt because the only reasonable information I've seen on what they've achieved suggests they've got something interesting, and also because it a) doesn't seem that ridiculous to me and b) doesn't really matter enough to me personally to go and investigate further. They haven't claimed the sky is falling. Why are you, and others, going ape-shit (as so often happens on Slashdot) just because someone's dared to suggest - tentatively suggest, at that - something t

The reason I'm going "ape shit" is because this is one story in a continual stream of complete bollocks the press releases from which get recycled into the "media" on a regular basis, making scientists look truly stupid and helping to destroy public trust in science, the scientific method and scientists as a whole.

No, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt because the only reasonable information I've seen on what they've achieved suggests they've got something interesting, and also because it

Interesting != Science

a) doesn't seem that ridiculous to me

So Zeus was a historical figure and the Greeks painted him while he posed? He's just one of many of their gods painted.

I believe it's obvious that this is like reading tea leaves. When you start with a unrealistic premise it's nearly impossible to get to a realistic solution. Perhaps because of your "b" you just don't care to scrutinize the logic.

I'll agree with you that it's interesting, but it's not science. It would be impossible to try and make any type of measurement for what

You are correct, I didn't read the article. No need though, because the article won't change my logic at all. Paintings and Canvas are not done to be exact replicas of nature, but are painted to be appealing to the eye. Even if an artist attempted to replicate a particular color he saw in the sky, there are thousands of reasons for the sky to be that color. Pollution is not the only, or even the best, explanation for the colors the artist chose.

They don't have to be exact to bear some relation to reality, and it wouldn't be unremarkable to discover that some painters would take pride in capturing the beauty of nature as exactly as possible.

Pollution is not the only, or even the best, explanation for the colors the artist chose.

The abstract doesn't mention pollution, per se (man-made or otherwise). Still, the authors have found a correlation, albeit a slight one which they only tentatively propose to be of limited utility. Yes, many things will have a bearing on how an artist paints his pictures. But it hardly seems outside the realm o

What you seem to miss completely is that an artist does not choose colors by the colors they see, or that someone else saw. Colors are chosen more for providing an emotion, or to have continuity in the painting, or to emphasize a color in the focus area, or to help move a persons eye to a different region of the painting, or countless other things. It also has to do with the paint being used, how the color is added to the paint and what is used to make the color. None of that is "realism".

What you seem to miss completely is that an artist does not choose colors by the colors they see

If that was literally true, every painting would be random colours, wouldn't it?

Colors are chosen more for providing an emotion, or to have continuity in the painting, or to emphasize a color in the focus area, or to help move a persons eye to a different region of the painting, or countless other things.

I disagree. Colours in art are chosen primarily for what things actually look like, otherwise we'd have paintings of Elizabeth I with blue hair and red skin. But for some reason everyone painted her as pasty and redheaded, because she was. In almost all cases, those things you've mentioned are secondary factors. I don't think you'd find many artists who'd paint a clear daytime sky as hot pink just because they'd have an argument

If that was literally true, every painting would be random colours, wouldn't it?

Random? No, and the statement is an absurdity (intentional or otherwise). For example: If I paint a horse blue, it's not going to look much like a horse. I don't go measure horse RGB values of real horses, but I stay within browns, blacks, whites, and grey colors. I may put spots in a pattern that is intended to move your eyes in one direction or another, I don't necessarily use an exact pattern found on a real horse somewhere. If I wanted viewers to feel more tranquil, I'll probably use lighter colors

Exactly. Your primary influence is the actual colour of horses, and so it will be for the majority of artists.

Let's simplify things and discuss zebras. If zebras in the 18th century were 25% white and 75% black, but those in the 19th century were 50% white and 50% black, you would expect paintings to reflect this quite well, wouldn't you? What if they were once 40% white and 60% black, but now 50-50? That information would also seem likely to be recoverable, especially given a variety of paintings by a vari

Let's simplify things and discuss zebras. If zebras in the 18th century were 25% white and 75% black, but those in the 19th century were 50% white and 50% black, you would expect paintings to reflect this quite well, wouldn't you? What if they were once 40% white and 60% black, but now 50-50? That information would also seem likely to be recoverable, especially given a variety of paintings by a variety of artists.

If I look at various paintings of Zebras, I'm not going to be able to do any such measurements. I'll find Zebras that appear to be 6" tall, and others that look like mountains. I'll find Zebras with 2 strips, and Zebras that have hundreds. I'll find Zebras with unicorn horns and monkeys riding them. I'll find Zebras with long hair, and short hair, grey hair and red lips, purple eyes, and all sorts of hoof colors. At no point do any of those pictures reflect reality, they reflect the story the artist w

How do you know which of the painters that are long dead were trying to capture an actual Zebra with the actual amount of stripes in the exact pattern and colors they saw?

Statistically, it doesn't matter. When people run polls, how do they know how many people are lying to them? That's why they use large samples, so the signal can rise above the noise.

I'll find Zebras with unicorn horns and monkeys riding them.

You'd be extremely unlikely to do so, and even if you did, as long as you sample enough zebra paintings, its noise would be swamped by the signal. Most zebra paintings would show a realistic, if not 100% accurate, size and number of stripes, especially if the artist could look out of his window and see a zebra.

Statistically, it doesn't matter. When people run polls, how do they know how many people are lying to them? That's why they use large samples, so the signal can rise above the noise.

Interesting point, but let's be clear. If I happen to be a politician and want to make the economy look good, would I poll every citizen in the US for their feelings on the economy? I believe that I would I target people that are employed, working in particular fields, living in certain types of neighborhoods. This is how statistics are done used to present an invalid/biased view of the world. Anyone believing that the economy is healthy in the US is an idiot, but politicians can show you this all day

In other news, researchers examining medieval paintings announced that they believe walking skeletons were much more prevalent 700 years ago than they are today. Bruce Campbell was unavailable for comment.

Setting aside artistic license, and the possibility that any artist may well have had chromatic aberrations in their vision, didn't we JUST have a story in the last month or two specifically discussing the changing of colors used in rennaissance paintings, and how displaying them in different colored lighting environments would likely allow us to see the pictures in (something more like) their original hues?

Seems like another effort to "prove" how the sky is falling, climatologically speaking.

We take a painting of a sunset from someone that died 500 years ago, maybe we have several paintings to remove some variation, but still this is where they start. Now they have to account for the shifting of the color due to aging of the paint. They they have to account for the paints that were even available to the artist.

Presumably they can determine date, time, and location from the scene begin depicted but I recall that some of these artists at that time would paint a single scene over the span of a m

In the last 150 years, the sunsets have become redder, likely reflecting increased man-made pollution.

It's also possible that red pigments break down, decompose, fade, and become less brilliant as decades and centuries go by; especially red pigments that were manufactured before colorfastness and other chemical properties were well understood.

The old masters painted "striking sunsets" because the sunsets were 'striking' - unusual, not your average ordinary sunset.

Could some statistician or philosopher of science please supply the appropriate term for the bias not recognised by TFA.--Intelligence is realizing that nobody knows what they're talking about. Wisdom is realizing that you don't, either.

It's how it is with so many things. Grains of truth may be there, but those who protest the loudest always have to go too far and come off with ridiculous crap like this so people like you and I just end up being disillusioned to the entire movement. It's like the "Woman in the Refridgerator" comic book stuff - sure, could women be better represented in comics? Of course. But when every little thing is brought forth and used as de facto evidence of something, it just makes you shake your head and walk a

Well, when I was a 5-6 years old child, we used to have -20 C (-4 F) every frigging winter morning, and +24 C in the summer. As of late it became -5C in winter and +35 C in summer. I don't need nobody's propaganda to tell the difference, and I am not alone. You can ask ski resourt owners about receding snow line, or use the new shipping lane Canada to Russia via the North pole. How about you educate yourself first?